Russian Empire
Government and administration Russia is an absolute monarch in which the power of the Emperor is, according to fundamental law, "autocratic and unlimited." This is as true in practice as it is on paper, making Russia one of the very few remaining absolute monarchies in the world (the other being Spain). The emperor Peter the Great changed his title from Tsar in 1721, when he was declared Emperor of all Russia. While subsequent rulers kept this title, the ruler of Russia is commonly known as Tsar or Tsaritsa in other countries. The power of the Emperor is limited by only two liabilities: he and his consort must belong to the Russian Orthodox Church; and he must obey the laws of succession, as established by Paul I. Otherwise, his power is virtually unlimited. The legislature The legislature of the Russian Empire comprises the State Council (upper house) and the State Duma (lower house). State Council By the law of the 20 February 1906, the State Council of the Empire was associated with the Duma as a legislative Upper House; and from this time the legislative power has been exercised normally by the emperor only in concert with the two chambers. The State Council, as reconstituted for this purpose, consists of 196 members, of whom 98 are nominated by the emperor, while 98 are elective. The ministers, also nominated, are ex officio members. Of the elected members, 3 are returned by the "black" clergy (the monks), 3 by the "white" clergy (seculars), 18 by the corporations of nobles, 6 by the academy of sciences and the universities, 6 by the chambers of commerce, 6 by the industrial councils, 34 by the governments having zemstvos, 16 by those having no zemstvos, and 6 by Poland. As a legislative body the powers of the Council are coordinate with those of the Duma; in practice, however, it has seldom if ever initiated legislation. The State Duma and electoral system The State Duma, which forms the Lower House of the Russian parliament, consists of 442 members, elected by an exceedingly complicated process. The membership is manipulated as to secure an overwhelming majority of the wealthy (especially the landed classes). Each province of the empire returns a certain number of members; added to these are those returned by several large cities. The members of the Duma are chosen by electoral colleges and these, in turn, are elected in assemblies of the three classes: landed proprietors, citizens, and peasants. In these assemblies the wealthiest proprietors sit in person whilst the lesser proprietors are represented by delegates. The urban population is divided into two categories according to taxable wealth, and elects delegates directly to the college of the Governorates. The peasants are represented by delegates selected by the regional subdivisions called volosts. Workmen are treated in special manner with every industrial concern employing fifty hands or over electing one or more delegates to the electoral college. In the college itself the voting for the Duma is by secret ballot and a simple majority carries the day. Since the majority consists of conservative elements (the landowners and urban delegates), the progressives have little chance of representation at all save for the curious provision that one member at least in each government is to be chosen from each of the five classes represented in the college. The Fundamental Laws of 1906 severely limit the power of the Duma. The Fundamental Laws state in part that the Emperor's ministers cannot be appointed by, and are not responsible to, the Duma, thus denying responsible government at the executive level. Furthermore, the Emperor has the power to dismiss the Duma and announce new elections whenever he wishes. Council of Ministers By the law of 18 October 1905, to assist the emperor in the supreme administration a Council of Ministers (Sovyet Ministrov) was created, under a minister president, the first appearance of a prime minister in Russia. This council consists of all the ministers and of the heads of the principal administrations. The ministers have no power, and their roles are primarily advisory; they help the Emperor plan and develop government policy, but not implement it (and the final word is always his). The ministries are as follows: *of the Imperial Court, to which the administration of the apanages, the chapter of the imperial orders, the imperial palaces and theatres, and the Academy of Fine Arts are subordinated; *Foreign Affairs; *War and Marine; *Finance; *Commerce and Industry (created in 1905); *Interior (including police, health, censorship and press, posts and telegraphs, foreign religions, statistics); *Agriculture; *Ways and Communications; *Justice; *National Enlightenment Current ministers As of April 2008, the members of the Council of Ministers are: Minister President: Aleksandr Drozdovsky Minister of the Imperial Court: Alexei Pokrovsky Minister of Foreign Affairs: Andrey Viskovatyi Minister of War and Marine: Ivane Cholokashvili Minister of Finance: Leonid Khodorkovsky Minister of Commerce and Industry: Mikhail Tretyakov Minister of Interior: Sergey Krasheninnikov Minister of Agriculture: Pyotr Kuchin Minister of Ways and Communications: Aleksandr Kokovstov Minister of Justice: Nikita Dmitriev Minister of National Enlightenment: Count Fyodor Golitsyn Most Holy Synod The Most Holy Synod (established in 1721) is the supreme organ of government of the Orthodox Church in Russia. It is presided over by a lay procurator, representing the Emperor, and consists of the three metropolitans of Moscow, St Petersburg, and Kiev, the archbishop of Georgia, and a number of bishops sitting in rotation. Senate The Senate (Pravitelstvuyushchi Senat, i.e. directing or governing senate), originally established during the government reform of Peter I, consists of members appointed by the Emperor. Its wide variety of functions are carried out by the different departments into which it is divided. It is the supreme court of cassation; an audit office, a high court of justice for all political offences; one of its departments fulfills the functions of a heralds' college. It also has supreme jurisdiction in all disputes arising out of the administration of the Empire, notably differences between representatives of the central power and the elected organs of local self-government. Lastly, it promulgates new laws, a function which theoretically gives it a power akin to that of the Supreme Court of the United States, of rejecting measures not in accordance with fundamental laws. The Senate is chaired by the Ober-Procurator (formerly known as the General Procurator), who serves as the link between the Emperor and the Senate and acts, in the emperor's own words, as "the sovereign's eye". Judicial system The judicial system of the Russian Empire, existed from the mid-19th century, was established by the emperor Alexander II, by the statute of 20 November 1864 (Sudebni Ustav). This system — based partly on English, partly on French models — was built up on certain broad principles: the separation of the judicial and administrative functions, the independence of the judges and courts, the publicity of trials and oral procedure, the equality of all classes before the law. Moreover, a democratic element was introduced by the adoption of the jury system and — so far as one order of tribunal was concerned — the election of judges. The establishment of a judicial system on these principles constituted a fundamental change in the conception of the Russian state, which, by placing the administration of justice outside the sphere of the executive power, ceased to be a despotism. This fact made the system especially obnoxious to the bureaucracy, and during the latter years of Alexander II and the reign of Alexander III there was a piecemeal taking back of what had been given. It was reserved for the third Duma, after the Russian Revolution of 1905, to begin the reversal of this process (which has since been completed). The system established by the law of 1864 was remarkable in that it set up two wholly separate orders of tribunals, each having their own courts of appeal and coming in contact only in the senate, as the supreme court of cassation. The first of these, based on the English model, are the courts of the elected justices of the peace, with jurisdiction over petty causes, whether civil or criminal; the second, based on the French model, are the ordinary tribunals of nominated judges, sitting with or without a jury to hear important cases. Provincial administration For purposes of provincial administration Russia is divided into 81 provinces (guberniyas), 20 regions (oblasts), and 1 district (okrug). Vassals and protectorates of the Russian Empire include the Emirate of Bukhara, the Khanate of Khiva and, after 1914, Tuva (Uriankhai). Of these 11 Governorates, 17 provinces and 1 district (Sakhalin) belong to Asiatic Russia. Of the rest 8 Governorates are in Finland, 10 in Poland. European Russia thus embraces 59 governments and 1 province (that of the Don). The Don province is under the direct jurisdiction of the ministry of war; the rest have each a governor and deputy-governor, the latter presiding over the administrative council. In addition there are governors-general, generally placed over several governments and armed with more extensive powers usually including the command of the troops within the limits of their jurisdiction. There are governors-general in Finland, Warsaw, Vilna, Kiev, Moscow, and Riga. The larger cities (St. Petersburg, Moscow, Odessa, Sevastopol, Kerch, Nikolayev, Rostov) have an administrative system of their own, independent of the governments; in these the chief of police acts as governor. Local administration Alongside the local organs of the central government in Russia there are three classes of local elected bodies charged with administrative functions: *the peasant assemblies in the mir and the volost; *the zemstvos in the 34 Governorates of Russia; *the municipal dumas. Municipal dumas Since 1870 the municipalities in European Russia have had institutions like those of the zemstvos. All owners of houses, and tax-paying merchants, artisans and workmen are enrolled on lists in a descending order according to their assessed wealth. The total valuation is then divided into three equal parts, representing three groups of electors very unequal in number, each of which elects an equal number of delegates to the municipal duma. The executive is in the hands of an elective mayor and an uprava, which consists of several members elected by the duma. Under Alexander III, however, by laws promulgated in 1892 and 1894, the municipal dumas were subordinated to the governors in the same way as the zemstvos. In 1894 municipal institutions, with still more restricted powers, were granted to several towns in Siberia, and in 1895 to some in Caucasia. Baltic provinces The formerly Swedish controlled Baltic provinces (Courland, Livonia and Estonia) were incorporated into the Russian Empire after the defeat of Sweden in the Great Northern War. Under the Treaty of Nystad of 1721, the Baltic German nobility retained considerable powers of self-government and numerous privileges in matters affecting education, police and the administration of local justice. After 167 years of German language administration and education, laws were promulgated in 1888 and 1889 where the rights of the police and manorial justice were transferred from Baltic German control to officials of the central government. Since about the same time a process of rigorous Russification was being carried out in the same provinces, in all departments of administration, in the higher schools and in the university of Dorpat, the name of which was altered to Yuriev. In 1893 district committees for the management of the peasants' affairs, similar to those in the purely Russian governments, were introduced into this part of the empire. Society Russian society is strongly hierarchical in nature, with subjects segregated into sosloviyes, or social estates (classes) such as nobility (dvoryanstvo), clergy, merchants, cossacks, peasants, and serfs. Feudalism, long since abolished in most of Europe, remains firmly entrenched in Russia. Russia remains an overwhelmingly rural society, and the vast majority of citizens (81.6%) belong to the peasant order (this number includes serfs), the others are: nobility, 1.3%; clergy, 0.9%; the burghers and merchants, 9.3%; and military, 6.1%.. Native people of the Caucasus, non-ethnic Russian areas such as Tartarstan, Bashkirstan, Siberia, and Central Asia are officially registered as a category called inorodtsy (non-Slavic, literally: "people of another origin"). Serfs, contractually bound to the land, are afforded protection by lords in return for physical labor and other services. Critics abroad decry this as slavery, but the Russian government denies this, pointing out that the relationship between serf and lord is a voluntary, mutually beneficial exchange. In addition, many serfs, particularly the more productive ones, enjoy fairly decent standards of living, and a few even acquire great wealth. The status of a serf is, in general, proportionate to his level of productivity, i.e., productive serfs enjoy more privileges and are better off financially, while less productive serfs are not so well off. The living standards of serfs as a whole have been steadily increasing over the following decades, due to the modernization of the country and increased productivity of the serfs. Many lords provide healthcare and education for serfs in addition to protection, particularly for those serfs whose labor is the most profitable. While Russia has a fairly large and growing middle class, it also has one of the largest income disparities - perhaps the largest - in the world. Russia counts among its numbers among the world's richest people, as well as some of the poorest. While the capital, St. Petersburg, is as modern and developed as any major world city, conditions in rural Russia are sometimes harsh; the poorest parts of the country are as undeveloped as the poorer sub-Saharan African countries, although this is chiefly due to the extreme remoteness of these areas. Infant mortality in the major cities is among the lowest in the world, low-to-moderate in the smaller cities, and fairly high to extremely high in remote areas. Similar disparities can be observed in life expectancy and literacy rates by region. Unlike most European countries, Russia's government provides no social welfare programs whatsoever; all such things are provided by religious institutions (churches, mosques, synagogues), private charities, or by international NGOs. Education is neither free nor compulsory; while literacy rate varies radically by region, as a whole the national literacy rate is estimated to be 75-80%. Nearly all schools are operated by the Russian Orthodox Church or by other religious bodies. Russia's people are as diverse as its vast landscape, and there are innumerable ethnic groups, languages, and cultures, yet surprisingly little animosity between groups. This is due to the state's innoculation in patriotism in its subjects (emphasizing that "we are many peoples, but we are all citizens of the Motherland") and its often brutal suppression of any and all manifestations of ethnic nationalism, religious separatism, etc. Finally, Russians are, as a whole, generally a very traditional and conservative lot. They are pious in their religious beliefs and staunchly conservative in their upbringing. As such, crime throughout the empire is generally very low, while women's rights leave much to be desired, and spousal abuse remains rampant, especially in rural areas; also, the literacy rate for women is generally much lower. Abortion remains strictly illegal, and homosexuality is punishable by hefty fines and/or long jail sentences. Possession of even small quantities of drugs can carry the death penalty. Religions The state religion of the Russian Empire is Russian Orthodox Christianity. Its head is the Emperor, but although he makes and annuls all appointments, he does not determine questions of dogma or church teaching. The principal ecclesiastical authority is the Holy Synod, the head of which, the Procurator, is one of the council of ministers and exercises very wide powers in ecclesiastical matters. Following the landmark reforms of 1922, Russians enjoy a great degree of religious freedom, and the state and church have since then worked actively to combat anti-Semitism and promote interreligious tolerance. According to returns published in 2005, based on the Russian Empire Census of 2002, adherents of the different religious communities in the whole of the Russian empire number approximately as follows, though the heading Orthodox includes a very great many Raskolniks or Dissenters. The ecclesiastical heads of the national Russian Orthodox Church consist of three metropolitans (St Petersburg, Moscow, Kiev), fourteen archbishops and fifty bishops, all drawn from the ranks of the monastic (celibate) clergy. The parochial clergy have to be married when appointed, but if left widowers are not allowed to marry again; this rule continues to apply today. Image:Coat of arms of Russia.PNG Category:Nations Category:Russian Empire